One of the many uses of the Internet is to connect customers who are contemplating a transaction with one or more service providers who want to compete for their business. A Lead consists of contact information and other information about a transaction that a customer is interested in, collected from a customer who has requested information about a possible transaction or has asked to be put in touch with a Service Provider. Leads are fungible products that are sold to one or more Service Providers (“Lead Buyers”). Leads are not purchase requests per se, rather they consist of the information necessary for a Service Provider to contact a customer in an effort to acquire the customer's business.
Today, it is difficult to efficiently price and distribute Leads as there is a great amount of variability amongst Lead Buyers in the value they place on a Lead based on local market factors, characteristics of the customer, time of month, and their current ability to service the business. In one market for Leads, there may be 100,000 Lead Buyers spread across the country. If a company that captures, or “Generates” Leads sets prices for the Leads, either on a per-lead basis or through a subscription, this pricing will not reflect the value of each individual Lead to the buyer. The impact of this disparity between price and value to the buyer results in two things: 1) Leads that are overpriced that do not sell; and 2) Leads that are underpriced that sell at less than the optimal price. So, Lead Generators are faced with a situation where they generate no revenue from overpriced Leads while not generating as much money as they could from underpriced Leads.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a lead marketplace system and method that overcomes these problems of conventional systems and it is to this end that the system and method are directed.